


Sweet Antivan Wine

by sesquipedalianMarquis



Series: The Meraad Chronicles [9]
Category: Dragon Age (Tabletop RPG), Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: ? - Freeform, Antiva, F/M, Fluff, Mercenaries, No Strings Attached, POV Third Person, Qunari, Rialto (Dragon Age), Romance, Sappy, Short & Sweet, Short One Shot, Unrequited, Vashoth, all characters present are secretly ben-hassrath, merchants, minor infidelity, role-playing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 21:20:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17352803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sesquipedalianMarquis/pseuds/sesquipedalianMarquis
Summary: A rich Antivan merchant princess picks up a qunari mercenary. Short and sweet drabble about their casual relationship. Set around 9:24 Dragon, pre-Origins.(Characters are original, from and for a campaign of the Dragon Age tabletop RPG.)





	Sweet Antivan Wine

The wine is sweet and heady, and the air is heavy and sweet with fragrance. Everything feels like it’s passing through molasses. The perks of being a merchant princess, she tells him, is all the free time I have to indulge, and all the goodies of the trade.

Mm. Indulgence. Sweet, heady indulgence. He’s draped across the softest, plushest chaise, she’s draped over him; there’s a lot of draping going on. The silk robe draped on her is probably also a goodie of the trade. She leans over, pours more sweet wine from the glass carafe, all flashy arc and elegant wrist. Her robe slides down her arm like a whisper. She drinks, and leans in for a kiss, sticky with sugar and sweet as sin. Settles again. Tell me about Kirkwall, she say. She’s been there, she knows the high streets and the silk vendors and the counts. So he tells her about Lowtown, about the reek and the dirt and the bar-fights, and the scum of Darktown that creeps out in the night. Plays the rugged mercenary to her spoiled princess, and it’s a most romantic game. They play, round and round in steps both familiar and foreign. She loves the games and so he plays the adoring supplicant, the possessive lover, the rugged stranger at her whim.

Summer in Antiva, and Meraad does not worry about working for his money. He doesn’t worry about food. He lounges in the mansion with the lady of the house, and doesn’t think of anything unless she asks him to. She picked him up in the markets, took him to her mansion for her delight, like a curio. Just to please me, she had said, to while away the time, if it pleases you as well. And it does. It’s so easy to just exist, drift at her beck and call. Maybe he’s filling a void. Maybe she really just likes to indulge. It pleases her to have him around the house, and her servants are polite to him as if he was a diplomat, a dignitary, rather than just here to provide their lady with company. Bought with promise of good food and lodging. Not that he minds.

Weeks pass in a haze. Eventually, he wakes up, mouth sour from all the sugar, and looks around the silk covers. His hair is long enough to stick to his head weirdly. She smiles when he finds her in the dining room, having a late breakfast, lots of candied dates and fresh grapes and well-brewed coffee. They bathe together and he feeds her grapes by hand, and she kisses his fingertips for every one, and when dusk falls they lounge on the balcony and watch the sea. He says he should be on his way, and she agrees. Come back sometime, it gets lonely in such a big mansion. Yeah, he says, I might. He won’t.

He leaves the next morning, with his pack full of foods from her kitchens. She doesn’t see him off at the door, but he said goodbyes in her chamber, and she swooned into a farewell kiss. Probably she just went back to sleep after. Fair, because it’s barely dawn. Rialto is only just starting to wake up as he wanders southwards, like he’s surfacing from a dream. There is an ache in him that lingers like a heavy bruise, and he wonders if he could have loved her. It fades, in time.

 

Five years later, he’s back in Antiva, and he hangs around the markets of Rialto again. She is there, his lady, enjoying the sun, and greets him like an old friend, treats him to food, has him tell her about Ferelden. There’s a husband now, so instead of taking him to the mansion, she gets them to an inn. They fuck for a night, and she kisses him when he leaves, come back sometime, whenever the wind takes you back to Antiva. Yeah, he says, I might. He will.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I may post more from this !verse.


End file.
